An interesting bit of news from England, which is related to cryptography but not necessarily in the realm of AlertBoot mobile encryption. A man in Surrey found the remains of a pigeon in his chimney. The bird carried a secret message in a red plastic capsule attached to its leg. I've reproduced it to the best of my abilities:

AOAKN

HVPKD

FNFJU

YIDDC

RQXSR*

DJHFP

GOVFN

MIAPX

PABUZ

WYYNP

CMPNW

HJRZH

NLXKG

NEMKK

ONOIB

AKEEQ

UAOTA

RBQRH

DJOFM

TPZEH

LKXGH

RGGHT

JRZCQ

FNKTQ

KLDTS

GQIRU

AOAKN

27 1525/6

NURP 4OTW 194 NURP 37DK 76

"To the best of my abilities" because I've had to guess a couple of the entries. If you'd like to check for yourself, my sources are the dailymail.com, where a picture is available, and the Vancouver Sun (video @ 00:52 mark is the most legible).

I notice straight off the bat that the first entry and penultimate entry of the main body are identical (AOAKN), so chances are the penultimate entry is actually the last entry (along with the fact that "27 1525/6," whatever it may be, is composed entirely of numbers while the rest of the message is entirely letters). All letters of the English alphabet are present in this section.

The last two lines, unlike the main body, combine letters and numbers. In fact, I have to wonder whether the circle in 4OTW is a zero as opposed to an "oh," in keeping with the 37 right below it.

Would it be possible for an amateur crypto-cracker to wean the hidden message? Possibly. Cryptanalysis has made advances since the World War II era. On the other hand, the use of onetime pads makes it impossible to crack short messages. Or even long ones, as the Beale ciphers show (they're from 1885, and one of them remains uncracked).

* Update (02 NOV 2012): Others have done transcribed the encrypted message as well, and some have written the RQXSR entry as RQXDR. But the Vancouver Sun video clearly shows an S.* Update (23 NOV 2012): GCHQ has given up on cracking it.

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About sang_lee

Sang Lee is a Senior Account Manager and Security Analyst with AlertBoot, Inc., the leading
provider of managed endpoint security services, based in Las Vegas, NV. Mr. Lee helps with the deployment and ongoing
support of the AlertBoot disk encryption managed service.
Prior to working at AlertBoot, Mr. Lee served in the South Korean Navy. He holds both a B.S. and an M.S. from Tufts
University in Medford, Massachusetts, U.S.A.